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Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)

Hydrangeas

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to sketch fresh flowers. These hydrangeas are from my hairdresser’s shop, Circle Salon in Kensington, CA. The shop is always filled with multiple bouquets of her stunning home-grown flowers–all of them more interesting than anything you’d find at the florists. Julie’s an amazing gardner and a great hairstylist too. For the series of Saturday watercolor classes I’m teaching, she’s letting me visit the shop on Fridays and take home some nice specimens for the class.

I wish my garden produced such beautiful flowers, but it takes more than wishing and I don’t seem to have the time, energy, or willingness to use chemicals required here in the fog belt of the San Francisco Bay Area, to do more than wish and water.

I drew directly from the flower with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine.

17 replies on “Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)”

This is delightful! Love the composition – and thanks for mentioning your materials (I just posted to EDM about that!) I had forgotten that Pigma pens are waterproof.

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BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! AND SO PINK!!! Here in NC, the soil is so acidic that our hydrangeas are mostly blue-purple! What a wonderful gift to be able to share in your friend’s garden! BTW, I LOVE the vibrancy of these, Jana!!

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First time seeing your blog and all your wonderful, pretty, funny sketches and watercolors. Wish I could draw such lovely things. I have to settle for using my digital camera to capture the things I see.

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Hydrangeas are one of those flowers that make me think of mist and rain (Debs, upthread, and I once went on a bike trip to England and everywhere we saw lovely hydrangeas). It’s so hot here that your vision of this flower actually lowered the temperature in the room I’m sweltering in by about 20 degrees. Thank you. I want to learn to watercolor from you! What do you do with students who simply can’t draw (like me)? I so love the idea of a lovely moleskine sketchbook and a nice pen and some water colors. And those hydrangeas, those especially. xxoo, BL

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Jana, I’m really enjoying regular visits to your blog. (You’ve made my “Favorites” list.) One of the things I’m working on in my own drawing is trying to loosen up more and draw with more freedom and sense of movement, and I’m finding your drawings inspirational.

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First time visiting your blog … wow! Some fabulous drawings! I love the peacock! And I really like these flowers … I especially like the … I don’t know the art name for it … but the really tight editing (?) that you did so that you don’t see the entire bouquet, just the top flowers and the vase. That’s fantastic!
Cheers!
Mary Ellen

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Learn any and all of that if that is your passion and curiosity. Most botanist can’t paint like us, so why is it that painters apologize for not being able to er uh ‘botan’ like a botanist?! If I can take the chunk of time to draw an identifiable plant/ plant part, then someone else will just need to take a moment and correctly identify it!

Love the stance, the stem in the vase, the cropping and the vantage point you choose. Well observed!

FYI the botanist who trained me so many years ago, begged me to not take time away from being an artist (my passion… not at all botany) to do what they did so easily (botany..thier passion) That advice, 20 + years ago has served me well over the years, thank you.

Cynthia Padilla
Editor Sketching & Drawing. Garden & Hearth Publishing.
http://www.gardenandhearth.com/SketchingandDrawing.htm

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I’ve come across your blog by chance and I admire your sketches. Just like Cindy I wish I could take classes from you.
These hydrangeas made me stop and enjoy their simplicity, freshness and beauty. Thanks for sharing.

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